Data ownership and control in connected smart cities

I am Ruben Verborgh, computer scientist
and contributor to the Solid ecosystem.

• professor of Semantic Web technology
  at Ghent University – imec, Belgium
• Solid technology advocate
  at Inrupt inc., USA

With Solid, you choose where you store
every single piece of data you produce.

You can grant apps and people access
to very specific parts of your data.

Separating app and storage competition
drives permissionless innovation.

Solid is an ecosystem of data and apps
that work seamlessly together.

• data pods
  • profile
  • photos
  • comments
  • likes
  • …
• applications
  • photo album
  • meeting invites
  • document collaboration
  • …
• standards
  • HTTP
  • URL
  • RDF
  • LDP
  • LDN
  • …

Linked Data in the RDF model
solves crucial challenges for Solid.

• If we all store our own data,
  how do we connect it to others’ data?
• How can apps share data,
  without too many prior agreements?
• How do we integrate data
  from multiple data pods?

Through URLs and RDF, every piece of data
can link to any other piece of data.

PREFIX as: <https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#>
PREFIX xsd: <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#>
<#ruben-likes-cscc2019> a as:Like;
  as:actor  <https://ruben.verborgh.org/profile/#me>;
  as:object <https://oasc.events.idloom.com/connected-smart-cities-conference-2019#this>;
  as:published "2019-01-17T12:00:00Z"^^xsd:dateTime.

Shapes (and hopefully soon semantics)
enable layered compatibility.

PREFIX as: <https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#>
PREFIX xsd: <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#>
<#ruben-likes-cscc2019> a as:Like;
  as:actor  <https://ruben.verborgh.org/profile/#me>;
  as:object <https://oasc.events.idloom.com/connected-smart-cities-conference-2019#this>;
  as:published "2019-01-17T12:00:00Z"^^xsd:dateTime.

Different source data can be concatenated
(but let’s track provenance).

PREFIX as: <https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#>
PREFIX xsd: <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#>
<#ruben-likes-cscc2019> a as:Like;
  as:actor  <https://ruben.verborgh.org/profile/#me>;
  as:object <https://oasc.events.idloom.com/connected-smart-cities-conference-2019#this>;
  as:published "2019-01-17T12:00:00Z"^^xsd:dateTime.
<#carol-likes-cscc2019> a as:Like;
  as:actor  <https://www.example.org/people/carol#i>;
  as:object <https://oasc.events.idloom.com/connected-smart-cities-conference-2019#this>;
  as:published "2019-01-17T12:00:00Z"^^xsd:dateTime.

With Solid, the source of truth
is the original data source.

• trust about data origin
• trust about data privacy
• trust about data control

At Ghent University – imec, we are actively
looking to collaborate on smart cities.

Some of the smart cities projects we’re working on:

• Smart Flanders
  • transforming 13 cities in Flanders
• ESSENCE
  • storytelling in the sentient city
• MOS2S
  • data-driven journalism on smart cities